Now, Sir, be as sober as you will about the use and power of learning, logic, and eloquence, in the doctrines of salvation; condemn the bad use that heretics, schismatics, arians and socinians have made of them; yet let me whisper this truth into your ear, that you will never be delivered from the delusion and cheat of your own learning, till by a light risen up within you, you come to see, and know, that you want no more learning, to change you from a sinner into a saint, than _Mary Magdalen_ did. *God said to _Abraham_, _Walk before me, and be thou perfect_. This was the _Hebrew_ school, in which the father of the faithful, was to learn to be perfect. But here now comes the scholar-critic, and finds that matters stand not thus now, because the glorious light of the gospel (he says) has discovered that all lies in an _election_ and _reprobation_, and that salvation and damnation come from nothing else, the apostle expressly saying, _It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy_. What a learned strife has there been about the meaning of these words? And yet they mean not one jot more or less, than when the apostle saith, _The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them_. All that is in the one text, is in the other; and both of them say only this one great and good truth, that the creature can have no divine life, light, goodness, and happiness, but from _that_, which the holy triune God is, and operates in it. _Farewell._ An Extract from Mr. LAW’s Address to the CLERGY. _Published a little after his Death._ THE reason of my addressing this discourse to the clergy, is not, because it treats of things not of common concern to all Christians, but chiefly to induce them, as far as I can, to the serious perusal of it; and because whatever is _essential_ to Christian salvation, if either neglected, or mistaken by them, is of the saddest consequence both to themselves, and the churches in which they minister. I say _essential_ to salvation, for I would not turn my own thoughts, or call the attention of Christians to any thing, but the _one thing_ needful, the one thing _essential_, and only _available_, to our rising out of our fallen state, and becoming, as we were at our creation, an holy offspring of God, and real partakers of ♦of the divine nature. ♦ duplicate word “of” removed If it be asked, What this one thing is? It is the SPIRIT OF GOD ♦WORKING SPIRITUAL LIFE IN US. Nothing else is wanted by us, nothing else is intended for us by the law, the prophets, and the gospel. Nothing else is, or can be effectual, to the making sinful man become again a godly creature. ♦ “WOKKING” replaced with “WORKING”